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A baby’s value: On its own, none

“The fact that my daughter, Ashlyn, is alive makes the death of Griffin no less of a crime.”

So said state Rep. Leon Rideout, R-Lancaster, regarding an appalling amendment to his House Bill 1503 last week. The bill created new penalties for killing a mother and her unborn baby. It passed, 243-42 after an important provision was removed.

Rideout’s original bill allowed the state to prosecute someone (excluding mothers and abortion providers) whose actions resulted in the death of an unborn child of at least 8 weeks’ gestation. The House voted 176-116 to strip that provision. Rideout’s daughter Ashyln, then age 22, was in a serious car accident last summer. She was seven months pregnant with her son, Griffin, who was killed. Incredibly, a 176-member majority of the House voted to legally classify infants like Griffin as having no intrinsic value.

By stripping the penalty for killing an infant in the womb (with abortions excepted), the House has said that an unborn baby’s life is worth nothing on its own; its value exists only in its relationship to its mother. If the baby and the mother both die, enhanced legal penalties apply for the killer. If the baby dies but the mother lives, no crime has been committed.

Such mental contortions are the work of people who will defy all reason to protect the abortion industry from even a hint of discomfort. For this provision did not touch abortions or mothers. Rideout’s original language stated that the bill shall not apply “to any act committed by the woman pregnant with the fetus, to any medical procedure, including abortion, performed by a physician or other licensed medical professional at the request of the pregnant woman or her legal guardian....”

The bill would have made abortion a legally protected act while allowing the state to bring to justice the killers of wanted babies. And still the abortion industry‘s loyal allies rejected it. Simply recognizing the truth of life inside the womb would pose too great a threat to their sacrament.